'prey-agent.service: Failed with result "exit-code"': 'Cannot continue: ENOSPC: no space left on device, write'

Hello!

I use Prey on two Linux computers. On one, it works. On the other one, the service fails repeatedly and the device is not visible from the Prey website. Here are details from and of the affected computer.

~ $ journalctl -u prey-agent
-- Logs begin at Wed 2019-08-28 16:07:09 BST, end at Fri 2020-02-07 17:35:01 GMT. --
Aug 29 17:43:26 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 17:46:38 X230 systemd[1]: Stopping The Prey daemon....
Aug 29 17:46:48 X230 systemd[1]: Stopped The Prey daemon..
-- Reboot --
Aug 29 17:47:06 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 17:52:22 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Aug 29 17:52:22 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Aug 29 17:52:38 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Aug 29 17:52:38 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
Aug 29 17:52:38 X230 systemd[1]: Stopped The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 17:52:38 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 17:57:19 X230 systemd[1]: Stopping The Prey daemon....
Aug 29 17:57:29 X230 systemd[1]: Stopped The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:02:47 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:08:09 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Aug 29 18:08:09 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Aug 29 18:08:24 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Aug 29 18:08:24 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
Aug 29 18:08:24 X230 systemd[1]: Stopped The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:08:24 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:08:25 X230 prey[18012]: Cannot continue: ENOSPC: no space left on device, write
Aug 29 18:08:25 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Aug 29 18:08:25 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Aug 29 18:08:40 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Aug 29 18:08:40 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
Aug 29 18:08:40 X230 systemd[1]: Stopped The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:08:40 X230 systemd[1]: Started The Prey daemon..
Aug 29 18:08:41 X230 prey[21315]: Cannot continue: ENOSPC: no space left on device, write
Aug 29 18:08:41 X230 systemd[1]: prey-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE


$ neofetch --off
OS: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia x86_64 
Host: 2325L19 ThinkPad X230 
Kernel: 5.4.18-050418-generic 
Uptime: 4 hours, 41 mins 
Packages: 3378 (dpkg), 4 (flatpak), 7 (snap) 
Shell: bash 4.4.20 
Resolution: 1366x768 @ 60.02Hz 
DE: Cinnamon 4.4.8 
WM: Mutter (Muffin) 
WM Theme: Mint-Y-Dark (N_cinn) 
Theme: Mint-Y-Dark [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Paper [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: gnome-terminal 
CPU: Intel i5-3320M (4) @ 2.600GHz 
GPU: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller 
Memory: 1924MiB / 7779MiB 
Disk (/dev/sda2): 18G / 52G (35%) 

I see we have this in the log above: ‘Cannot continue: ENOSPC: no space left on device, write’. But where is Prey trying to write?

Perhaps the problem is with permissions on the directories named in the service file:

ExecStart=/usr/lib/prey/current/bin/prey

WorkingDirectory=/usr/lib/prey/current

Or perhaps the problem is with some /tmp directory?

EDIT: The problem appears to be that I had limited the number of so-called iodes on tmpfs. I changed that and now the service does not stop. However, the device still does not show on the website. Perhaps I am running into this problem - which is one I reported before.

Ah: the computer on which Prey works has a config file containing entries for ‘API’ and ‘unique ID’; on the problematic computer, those fields are empty. I think I’d copied that file from the one computer to the other. So, on the problematic computer: I deleted the conf file, did sudo apt purge prey, reinstalled Prey and . .

. . it still did not work. I had to hunt around the forum, find this, work out what the path for that program was on Linux, run the program - and find it did not seem to support HiDPI properly - and use it. Now, I suppose Linux users are more likely to work this stuff out that other people, but still: I should not have had to spend an hour working out how to do this, where ‘this’ is: getting Prey to work on a second computer.